Michael Jones, Linear Technology, Aug 21st 2013
What could be simpler than inductors? Pick one from a catalog based on saturation, inductance, DCR, etc, and you’re done. If you need more than that, get the Trilogy from Wurth, put it on your bed stand, and by morning you can select better.
Well, this is almost the case if you are designing a POL less than 100W using ferrite. There are several big vendors, reasonable data, and plenty of tutorials. If you graduate from POLs to higher power where you discover powder cores, amorphous, tape wounds, an others, and dare to custom wind it: things get tough quick.
In this blog entry I am not going to review all of magnetics or inductor design. I am simply going to take a few inductors of different types, take some data, and point out some differences. Also, I’ll show you that life is much better if you make your own measurements.